It’s no secret that Tech Crunch has been on a mission to promote the Droid at all costs, probably because Arrington needs daily affirmation that dropping the iPhone was a good move. But in the midst of all the puckering up was this little gem of an article this morning:

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/10/29/here-are-all-the-great-android-games-t…I had to do a double-take when I read the third paragraph. 512 MB of internal memory? Are you kidding me? In November of 2009, someone releases “the ultimate Android phone”, the phone that will “finally slay the iPhone” and it has as little storage as my Palm Treo did four years ago? Better yet, of that 512 MB, only 256 MB of internal storage is available for apps. And that’s not a Droid limitation; it’s an Android limitation. So no Android phone has enough space to hold more than 256 MB of applications.

I have more than a few apps on my iPhone that are bigger than that. Single apps, mind you. What good is running multiple apps at once, if you have no room to hold more than 5 or 10 decent ones on the entire phone, anyway? Sure, some great apps are very small. You don’t need gigabytes of memory to write a Twitter client. But that’s not the point. Imagine if someone came out with a laptop today, and then they told you that even though you have a 500GB hard drive, you can only use a total of 1 GB for applications. Would anyone buy that? Maybe your applications folder is currently smaller than that, but would you want to be told that it can never be bigger than that, no matter how big a hard drive you put into the machine later?

Just forget about any kind of decent game on Android. It’s completely out of the question. Which means that all the transformers tech nerd marketing for the Droid phone makes even less sense. Not even teenaged males are going to be interested in this now.

And don’t talk to me about SD cards. You can’t store apps on them. Only music or video, or other media files. So they’re useless to this discussion. You can write all the articles of praise you want, tell me about the future belonging to Google, etc. But now I’m just going to laugh at you. At least until Google comes to its senses and lifts this absurd limitation. What did Steve Jobs say when introducing the iPhone a few years back? “Baby software.” Exactly.

John Biggs on Tech Crunch suggests that Google should make Apple “beg” Google to write a turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/28/google-should-make-apple-beg-for-maps-na… Where do I begin? Let’s get one thing completely straight. In the mobile phone space, Google needs Apple right now A LOT more than Apple needs Google. Google makes money by spreading its ads everywhere possible. For Google to suddenly lose its ability to spread those ads via the iPhone would be a drastic loss. This is why Google is trying to get out ahead of the PR battle by making Apple out to be the bad guy. We’re building a turn-by-turn app for the iPhone; if Apple rejects it, that’s not our fault. Those are the words of someone who doesn’t currently have the upper hand. If Google were out to “kill” the iPhone, it would not only NOT build an iPhone navigation app, it would pull other Google services off the iPhone. And then Apple would need to start begging. But Google can’t do that. Because the goal is to get Google services in more places, not fewer. And the last thing Google wants is to not be available on the hippest, hottest phone in existence.

I’m not the first to say it, and this won’t be the last time I say it: Google has no interest in killing the iPhone. Android exists to kill Windows Mobile. And the only reason Google needs to kill Windows Mobile is because Microsoft doesn’t want Google on Windows Mobile. It would much rather push Bing, or whatever Microsoft wants to call its search this week.

The iPhone helps Google kill Windows Mobile. Thus, as long as Google can get some of its services on the iPhone, Google likes the iPhone. Once Google kills Windows Mobile, and then kills off Symbian, and then tackles RIM, then—MAYBE then—Google will try to compete with the iPhone. Right now, it wouldn’t stand a chance. Not with another wannabe phone marketed to sci-fi nerds like the Droid. Free turn-by-turn GPS is not going to suddenly make every single iPhone owner drop their iPhone and grab a Droid. I’d venture to say that it won’t make more than ten iPhone owners drop their iPhone and grab a Droid. But none of that matters for now. Apple doesn’t have a competing product to Google. It has no interest in ad revenue. And it has welcomed Google services on the Mac and the iPhone with open arms, with few exceptions. (More on those exceptions later.) So even in a future where Android and the iPhone were the only two phones in existence, Google would still have no reason to want to kill the iPhone. As long as Apple never tries to get into the ad business.

Tech writers really need to stop thinking like nerds and start thinking like average people. Turn-by-turn navigation is just starting to become a somewhat, kinda-sorta popular thing. Having that feature on your phone is nowhere near hitting critical mass in popularity right now. It’s not even on the radar for most people, let alone a must-have. It’s nerd stuff. I fully expect a free turn-by-turn service to end up on the iPhone. Whether it be as a free Google app in the App Store, or integrated into Apple’s built-in Google Maps application, or an alternative service offered by Apple itself, sooner or later, this feature will become available. Meanwhile, there really is no rush, because the lack of this service on the iPhone is not going to cost Apple anything in the short term. In the long run, they’ll want to match Android feature for feature wherever possible. But it will be years before that really matters.

If the iPhone prospered for years without cut,copy, and paste, it’ll do fine without this free service for a while. Believe me.

Is it me, or does naming your phone “Droid”, marketing it with this kind of imagery, and then boasting about the Google GPS app being its “killer” feature a really dumb marketing strategy?

Sure, this may work on the übergeeks, but is this going to appeal to my mother? She’s more likely to be frightened by it.

Consumer tech companies, do yourselves a favor. Watch Apple commercials for about a hundred hours, take a look around the Apple web site and visit the retail stores until you figure out what’s different about the strategy. Then go ask the women in your life what’s different about it. Remember, the Internet didn’t become a household item until shopping and the early forms of social networking began to take shape. You can’t ignore more than 50% of the population and expect to succeed. You need D&D playing Star Trek lovers to build great products. But those same nerds should never design nor market your products.

Got my hand on a Magic Mouse at the Apple Store tonight for the first time.

With most new Apple products, I read about them, I look at pictures on the web, and immediately I am either convinced I’ll buy it, or that I would buy it if I could convince myself I need whatever it does. With mice, it’s a different story. Apple has had a long history of creating mice that people are less than enthused about. And while I hate to agree with most people about anything, with Appple mice, they have a point.

It’s not that Apple mice are actually bad. (I’ll catch flak for saying this, but even the iMac hockey puck mouse wasn’t BAD, really.) It’s that unlike with most other Apple products, they don’t tend to be miles ahead of the competition. They’re simply functional mice. No more, no less. And they cost a little more than they should, despite not being significantly better.

So with the Magic Mouse, I did what I always do with Apple mice. I waited a few days until I could actually try one out, instead of just running out and buying one. The only comments I’ve really seen so far on the web are from people who haven’t used the Magic Mouse. Predictibly, they assume that the mouse is like any other Apple mouse.

But having played with it for a few minutes tonight, I have to say I was impressed. The flick scrolling on the top of the mouse’s surface was the most impressive feature. I’ve been two-finger scrolling on my trackpad for a while now, so it was completely natural to me. Very smooth. Way more predictable than any scroll wheel or ball I’ve used. And the right clicking seemed far more accurate than the old Mighty Mouse. The design of the mouse is minimalist and beautiful, of course. Very thin, which may bother some people who like to palm their mice, but I manipulate my mice with my fingertips (which is why I didn’t hate the hockey puck as much as most people). The low profile actually comes in handy for touch gestures, while still being comfortable for cursor movement.

I do wish there were more gestures available, and that the software were more customizable. But overall, I was impressed enough to consider getting one. As much as I’m a trackpad user at heart, I have been searching for the ultimate portable mouse for long-session use. The trakpad leaves my arm a bit numb if I use it several hours at a time. I’ve been through several Bluetooth mice, including the Mighty Mouse, and none has ever come close to making me really happy. Maybe I’ll give this one a try.

Turns out that the new 27″ iMac that Apple released yesterday will be able to accept input via its miniDisplay port. That means that you will be able to plug in a cable from another system, such as a MacBook Pro, and use the iMac as a giant secondary monitor instead of a CPU.

While that sounds cool, I’m thinking “Why would anyone want to do that?” The iMac is going to be faster than just about any portable computer you’re going to plug into it. Just transfer the files over to the iMac, or network the two wirelessly.

Others have speculated that you will be able to plug in a blu ray player and use the iMac as a way-overpriced 27″ TV. Again, why? A 42″ TV would run you far less than the iMac.

So why did Apple do this? My guess? Tablet.

From the moment the iMac was announced yesterday, I considered buying an iMac for the first time. As I mentioned before, I’m delaying the upgrade of my MacBook Pro for the first time in several years this year because I’m in the middle of Apple’s upgrade cycle. There’s also some small part of me that wants to wait and see exactly what this whole tablet thing is going to be about.

On the surface, I have no interest whatsoever in a tablet computer. Netbooks are useless, if you ask me. If the tablet is just a netbook without a keyboard, it’s even more useless. But because I know Apple, I know that the tablet HAS to be more than a netbook with no keyboard. It has to meet some function of mobile computing that isn’t currently being met by my combination of laptop and iPhone.

So what if the Tablet somehow ends up being powerful enough to fulfill my mobile needs? I’m not talking about email and web surfing. My iPhone does that already quite well. I’m talking about being able to do at least middle-of-the-road photo editing, web design, maybe some meager music or video editing. Wouldn’t it be cool to give up the laptop and get a tablet/iMac combination? Assuming the Tablet has minidisplay port, perhaps I could plug it into the iMac to extend its display?

Well, no, I still can’t see why I’d want to do that.

What about the other way around? What if I can plug the tablet into the iMac, and the tablet becomes the extended display? Or some sort of advanced trackpad control system? A wacom tablet of sorts, but one that can display its controls, and change its interface by context.

Crazy speculation, I admit. But plugging in a Blu-Ray player into an iMac to watch movies is not something Apple would bother to do, if that were the only reason to do it.

There has to be something else going on here.